Welcome to New York Times Bestselling Author Alina Adams, who is returning to the blog to share 5 changes she made to her latest book, My Motherâs Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region. Keep reading to get insight into Alina’s revising strategies on this intriguing historical fiction book, which is rooted in detailed research about a little known chapter of Soviet and Jewish history.Â
Change #1: The Beginning
The first draft of the book which became My Motherâs Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region opened with three chapters setting up the âpresent dayâ sequenceâSan Francisco, CA 1988. (When the bulk of the book takes place in the 1930s and 1940s, 1988 is âmodern.â)
It introduced the heroine, Lena, her difficult relationship with her withholding mother, the death of her beloved father, her teenage daughter, and her controlling husbandâas well as the man who would become a potential love interest in the future. The three chapters went into great detail about why Lena always felt unloved by her mother, and how her faltering marriage got to this state: Lena used to love that her husband made all of her decisions for her. It made her feel that he cared about her in a way that her mother did not. Now she feels smothered. Her husbandâs not the one that changed; Lena is. She knows it and blames herself . . . but she still canât help feeling like she wants out. Itâs guilt about her daughter thatâs making her stay.
However, the feedback I got was to get to the âgood stuffââ the story of Lenaâs mother and her desperate escape to Birobidzhan, the Jewish Autonomous Region on the border between Russia and China in the mid-1930sâfaster.
So the original three chapters became a single prologue which, in the hardback version, now runs a tight 12 pages. I still hit all the main points, but much more compactly. You have to wait for Part Three to get the details. And learn how it all turns out.
Change #2: In the Name of the Father
The first lines of the book read: Lina Mirapolskyâs father was dying. Her husband was trying to get a discount on it.
The newly truncated prologue still opens with the death of Lenaâs dad, and her surprise at the way her mother reacts to it.
In the first draft, Lena has always known that heâs her stepfather and adored him anyway.
In the rewrite, his cryptic, dying words send Lena on a hunt which reveals that the man who raised her wasnât her biological father.
I initially deliberately avoided that, because it felt too cliched, but was ultimately convinced to put it in for the âwhamâ moment which closes out the prologue. Curious to hear what readers think!
Change #3: Straight Ahead
Part Two of My Motherâs Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region follows Lenaâs mother, Regina, from the time a neighbor in her familyâs Moscow communal apartment introduces 12-year-old Regina to the dream of Birobidzhan, getting her involved with the Yiddish-language newspaper she publishes as well as the historic figures committed to the cause of an independent Jewish homeland in the Soviet Union, until 18- year-old Regina is forced to flee Moscow to avoid being arrested along with her neighbor and all their compatriots.
In the original draft, the story is told chronologically. In the published version, we first meet Regina as she is fleeing, and the question of what she is fleeing from is left unanswered until much later in the story, when she is forced to confess all. The idea here is to set up suspense as to why Regina is on the run, what she is hiding, and her reasons for being so secretive with everyone she meets, including the man she starts to fall in love with.
Change #4: Slap, Slap, Kiss, Kiss
In my first pass, Reginaâs initial meeting with her future love interest is full of antagonism. Regina smugly feels she knows whatâs best for Birobidzhan because sheâs read books about it better than Aaron, the man who has lived there for years. This leads to lots of witty banterâthe kind I frankly, love to write. But it also made Regina come off as unlikable. (I was writing her as a know-it-all teen-ager who would eventually come to realize the error of her ways, wise up, mature, and admit her youthful folly. But I guess nobody wants to wait that long.)
Now, Regina is still cryptic with Aaron, but itâs because she has a secret she doesnât want him to discover, and also because she is deliberately turned against him by a third party with his own agenda.
The pair still argues and banters, and I was even able to keep some of the same dialogue. But the context and motivation is different, making her less of a brat, and more of a scared kid.
Change #5: Where the Wind Takes You
My first idea for Reginaâs story was to have it take place exclusively in Birobidzhan. The little-known history of the place, as well as the paranoid atmosphereâanyone could be arrested at any moment, everyone was always spying on their neighbors, loyalties were constantly shifting, and what was politically safe to say one day could, overnight, become treasonâseemed ripe for gripping narrative possibilities.
But then, I decided to up the stakes. Historical fiction, especially featuring Jewish characters, has plundered every aspect of the Holocaust. There isnât nearly as much written about what was happening at the same time in the Soviet Union.
The USSR lost over 24 million people in their âGreat Patriotic War,â roughly half of them military, the other half civilian. The Russians thenâas nowâfight by throwing bodies at the enemy, treating them as disposable. And then there were the Nazi prisoner of war camps. Western powers were signatories to the Geneva convention. The Soviets were not. Even when they were kept in the same camp, American soldiers were treated much better than Soviet ones. (Thereâs a reason there were no Soviet prisoners having a goofy, fun time in Hoganâs Heroes.)
Once I did my research there, I decided to throw my heroes from the frying pan of Josef Stalinâs Great Terror into the fire of a Nazi POW camp.
After all, isnât one aspect of compelling writing to make it seem like things canât get any worse . . . and then make them get worse?
With his dying breath, Lena’s father asks his family a cryptic question: “You couldn’t tell, could you?” After his passing, Lena stumbles upon the answer that changes her life forever.
As her revolutionary neighbor mysteriously disappears during Josef Stalin’s Great Terror purges, 18-year-old Regina suspects that she’s the Kremlin’s next target. Under cover of the night, she flees from her parents’ communal apartment in 1930s Moscow to the 20th century’s first Jewish state, Birobidzhan, on the border between Russia and China. Once there, Regina has to grapple with her preconceived notions of socialism and Judaism while asking herself the eternal question: What do we owe each other? How can we best help one another? While she contends with these queries and struggles to help Birobidzhan establish itself, love and war are on the horizon.
New York Times Bestselling Author Alina Adams draws on her own experiences as a Jewish refugee from Odessa, USSR as she provides readers a rare glimpse into the world’s first Jewish Autonomous Region. My Mother’s Secret is rooted in detailed research about a little known chapter of Soviet and Jewish history while exploring universal themes of identity, love, loss, war, and parenthood. Readers can expect a whirlwind journey as Regina finds herself and her courage within one of the century’s most tumultuous eras.
Alina is the author of soap-opera tie-ins, figure skating mysteries, and romance novels. She was born in Odessa, USSR and moved to the US with her family in 1977. She has covered figure skating for ABC, NBC, ESPN and Lifetime, and worked for the soap-operas As the World Turns, Guiding Light, All My Children, and One Life To Live. Her historical fiction novels, The Nesting Dolls (2020) and My Motherâs Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region are based on a combination of family history and rigorous research.
Hi there! I’m Stacy Juba, an author, freelance editor, and the founder of Shortcuts for Writers. I’d love to connect. If you’re a writer, here’s how we can work together:Â
Too many writers are making a big mistake. Theyâre not giving their manuscript the rehabilitation it needs, even though itâs suffering from the literary equivalent of bursitis, sciatica, an ACL tear, and plantar fasciitis.
Ouch!
Some writers believe their manuscript is much stronger than it really is because let’s face it, no one teaches you how to write a book in high school. Others arenât sure what to do next, so they tinker without a strategy. Eventually, they might send the book to a freelance editor, and only then do they realize that one round of editing wonât be enough by a longshot.
Just like a single physical therapy visit wonât suffice for a person coping with bursitis, sciatica, an ACL tear, or plantar fasciitisâlet alone ALL of those ailments at the same time.
Unfortunately, if youâre like most writers, your manuscript is a minefield of injuries and weak spots. It needs a comprehensive rehab plan and lots of TLC.
Free Book Editing Masterclass
If you are someone with a desire to help your book reach its full potential and give your story the chance it deserves, then I want to invite you to watch an on-demand recording of my FREE training: How to Create Your Editing Game Plan and Fast-Track Your Book: 3 Costly Mistakes to Avoid.
After this class, you will be able to identify the:
4 stages of editing
Types of editors and what they do
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You’ll also walk away knowing:
Why hiring an editor too early can be a costly mistake
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The basics of the self-editing framework I’ve taught to hundreds of authors
Intrigued? Sign up for this free book editing masterclass right here.
Hi there! I’m Stacy Juba, an author, freelance editor, and the founder of Shortcuts for Writers. I’d love to connect. If you’re a writer, here’s how we can work together:Â
It’s always fascinating to see what goes into the rewrite process. I’m delighted to welcome Amber Lambda, who shares five changes she made to her YA fantasy novel, Halos. Below, Amber, describes the fiction editing techniques she used when revising her book.
***
Rewriting and revising a novel takes a lot of patience and willpowerâespecially to change and cut away from your beloved, original ideas! But once you get past that bittersweet feeling, itâs so worth it to see your story grow into something you love even better. Here are five of the biggest changes I made to Halos and canât imagine it without those changes now!
First Chapter Rewrites
As Iâm sure most authors would agree, one of the hardest parts of writing a book is getting the first chapter to work right. I started with the list of things that a first chapter needed and checked it all off. I included the storyâs theme about chasing dreams, my main character, her goals, conflict with her best friend that helped set up the stakes, and a strong hook at the end to pique the readerâs interest and start the story… but something just wasnât clicking. After several readers, and just as many rewrites, I realized I had the answer all along. The elements were all thereâbut they indeed werenât clicking. Instead of being parts of a complete story coming together, they seemed unrelated. With that magical realization, I rewrote it once more, pulling everything together to fit the overall story and genre, and it did the trick. My beta readers loved it, and so did I!
Added POV
When drafting Halos the first time, I wrote from the limited POV of my protagonist, Faye. During my read-through to start revisions, however, part of the story appeared to be missing. I could fill in the details as the author, but it hadnât made it to the page for readers to experience. This inspired me to include the love interestâs POV on the next draft. Adding Icarusâs side of the story not only gave insight into the world and plot where Fayeâs POV didnât cover, but it made Icarusâs character arc much richer, paralleling Fayeâs arc in a way that wasnât shown before.
Expanding A Characterâs Role
Another element that I changed to make more sense for the reader was bringing Fayeâs friend Andrew back into the story at an earlier stage than intended. After relating to Fayeâs main internal conflict in the first chapter, he didnât come up again in person until closer to the end of the story. At first, I brought him back earlier because he reappeared without enough foreshadowing. But his presence also acted as a catalyst for tension throughout the middle of the story, making for a better plot and character motivations.
Removing Characters Who Didnât Serve The Story
On an opposite note, I cut two characters out from the original story. They added drama and complexityâbut that isnât always whatâs best. I found it difficult to layer them into the plot naturally, and they took away from the themes and effect I was aiming for. It was a tough choice, but once I took them out, the message of the story became much clearer and gave more room to emphasize the pieces that highlighted it instead.
Added Connecting Scenes
Have you ever read a book where it almost seemed like you missed something, so you went back to look, and you hadnât? My early drafts had a few places like that, where readers needed a little more shown about what happened between scenes. In some areas, it worked better to summarize instead of adding an entire scene that would feel like filler. But in most places, I fleshed out new scenes to show what happened, while simultaneously showing character interaction and growth, especially for side characters.
In the end, between the added POV, deeper themes, and the extra connecting scenes, my 36-chapter outline turned into a 43-chapter novel, at just the recommended word count for my genre. And my story transformed into a creation I loved more than ever!
More About Halos
Daydreamer Faye Wallace believes her recurring dreams of flying ships have a purpose beyond fantasy. And when Icarusâher swoon-worthy dream boyâknocks on the door, reality is swept away with her heart. Charged with saving the sky world of Halos from a destiny of prophesied doom, Faye embarks on a journey to relive her whimsical visions. Except for one problem: nothing about Halos matches what she remembers. Including Icarus.
Faye must sift truth from imagination and become the girl who saves her dreamsâbefore they create a nightmare she canât return from.
Amber Lambda is a YA romance, fantasy, and soft sci-fi author from the dreamy Midwest plains. Her mission is to write stories clean enough for the younger range of the YA crowd, but laced with themes and ideas that older teens (and adults!) will relate to and love just the same.
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Hi there! I’m Stacy Juba, an author, freelance editor, and the founder of Shortcuts for Writers. I’d love to connect. If you’re a writer, here’s how we can work together:Â
I’m always fascinated by how authors approach the rewrite process, but there’s one type of project I’ve never considered before: turning a script into a book. When I was researching SEO tags for this post, I discovered that lots of people search for phrases like “how to turn a script into a novel.” Well, author D.G. Driver has valuable tips for you and she shares them in the below Behind the Rewrite. D.G. will take you behind the scenes of revising her script for Songwriter Night: A Musical Romance into book form. That’s right. It wasn’t just any script. It was a script for a musical! I’m sure you’ll find this post as intriguing as I did.
In addition to being a writer, Iâm also an actress and theater director here in Nashville. Last year, when all the theaters in town closed, lots of theater types were creating virtual ways to do shows. I got a crazy idea to combine my novel writing skills with my love of musical theater and decided to write a story that featured songs, hire a cast to record it, and release it as a full cast audiobook called Songwriter Night: A Musical Romance.
Only there was a hitch. In order to have it available on Audible, there had to be a corresponding book. Well, even though the narration in the book is novelesque, I wrote Songwriter Night in script format. I had to revise and reformat the whole manuscript. The narration and dialogue remain 95 percent the same, but there were some definite snags that I want to share with you that makes up that other 5 percent. Hereâs how I handled them and what I learned.
How To Write The Song Lyrics
There are twelve songs in Songwriter Night. Most of these have the typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus structure typical of Country music. It felt tedious to have so much repetition of lyrics in the book version. Also, the reader canât hear the songs like in the audiobook version, so I had to figure out how to help the reader imagine what the songs sound like. Here is an example of how I did this for one of the songs.
In this scene, Aiden, a former member of the group whoâs hit the big time, has come back to show off one of his new songs, and heâs brought backup singers to sing it with him.
The three of them sing the chorus again. Instead of a bridge, the song repeats the last half of the verse, similar to the way Lyle had written his song.
âYou took her on one date, and I took her to prom.â She didnât stick with either of us very long. What do you say to finally letting that rest? Clink my beer and letâs reminisce.â
A slightly longer hold on the chord builds up to the final chorus, where Aiden embellishes the notes. Trish wonders if a key change might have been effective here, but she doesnât think itâs her place to suggest it. Aiden repeats the final line of the chorus with a nice run on âold daysâ and a chord change to emphasize it. The girls end the song with some pretty âoohsâ that remind her of songs from another era. Nice choice.
Action In Narration Versus Dialogue Tags
One real plus to writing a script is that I donât have to write âHe said/she saidâ dialogue tags at all. With this being a full cast recording, all the actors are played by different people with distinct voices. I didnât need to write who said what. Personally, I love books where instead of using tags, the author uses action from the character to denote who is speaking. I did this a lot more for this project than my other works. It needed a little revision from the way it looked in a script to what it needed to be for a book, though.
Hereâs an example from the audiobook script:
NARRATOR: Maybe she should sing a cappella. Does anyone do that here? TRISH: Is there anything to drink? LYLE: Yeah. What do you want? NARRATOR: Lyle leaps out of his chair before Trish even thinks about standing and getting the drink for herself. She looks past him at the assortment on the counter. TRISH: Water will be fine. Thank you. LYLE: Happy to be of service. NARRATOR: He hands her the water, and their fingers overlap for a moment. His fingertips are callused from playing guitar, and they scratch her knuckles ever so slightly as he whisks his hand away. She opens the bottle and puts it to her mouth, hoping he wonât see her blushing.
Now, hereâs the same scene reformatted for the book.
Maybe she should sing a cappella. Does anyone do that here? âIs there anything to drink?â she asks. âYeah. What do you want?â Lyle leaps out of his chair before Trish even thinks about standing and getting the drink for herself. She looks past him at the assortment on the counter. âWater will be fine. Thank you.â âHappy to be of service.â He hands her the water, and their fingers overlap for a moment. His fingertips are callused from playing guitar, and they scratch her knuckles ever so slightly as he whisks his hand away. She opens the bottle and puts it to her mouth, hoping he wonât see her blushing.
Adding Dialogue Tags
So, I couldnât get away completely with narration guiding the reader toward who is speaking, especially in scenes where there are more than two people having a conversation. I definitely had to use dialogue tags. I will tell you, when your main job is to go through your manuscript and tag dialogue, it gets awfully repetitive writing âhe saysâ and âshe saysâ over and over. You become intensely aware of how often youâre writing that. On the other, hand, you donât want your tags to be too all over the place or filled with unnecessary adverbs. Then it gets annoying.
Hereâs a group scene from the original script:
NARRATOR: Tammy huffs instead of answers. George raises an eyebrow to acknowledge that he won that round. The rest of the group is frozen in uncomfortable silence. NEIL: So, uh, are we continuing or not? GEORGE: Yeah, letâs go on. NARRATOR: George strums his guitar, and Neil begins to play. TAMMY: Youâre all going to sit here and let him embarrass me like this. ROY: It sounds like a good song. A real tears in my beer heartbreaker. ODETTA: Iâm interested to hear how the rest of it goes. Sad songs are the clay that Country music builds with. NARRATOR: George looks at Lyle who gives him an approving nod. TAMMY: Iâd like to point out that the middle part â the chorus? Thatâs mine. I wrote that. GEORGE: You did not. TAMMY: I did.
And hereâs the novelized version. Note the variety in the tags:
After a moment, Neil asks cautiously, âSo, uh, are we continuing or not?â âYeah, letâs go on.â George strums his guitar, and Neil begins to play. Tammy says to the group, âYouâre all going to sit here and let him embarrass me like this?â The music stops again. âIt sounds like a good song,â Roy responds. âA real tears-in-my-beer heartbreaker.â Odetta agrees, âIâm interested to hear how the rest of it goes. Sad songs are the clay that Country music builds with.â George looks at Lyle who gives him an approving nod. Tammyâs not done yet. âIâd like to point out that the middle part â the chorus? Thatâs mine. I wrote that.â âYou did not,â George says. âI did.â She sings a cappella to a tune very similar to the chorus of Georgeâs song. When I write first drafts, it is sometimes the dialogue tags that cause me to trip up or hit a block. I want to keep going with the action and dialogue and not waste time figuring out how to show who is saying what. Writing in script format first and then going back through the manuscript to adapt it to book format helped make this a more streamlined process. I may try this again with other projects.
More About Songwriter Night: A Musical Romance
In this sweet romantic comedy, Lyle and Trish are two aspiring Country music songwriters that meet at a Nashville coffee house. With Trish being new in town, Lyle invites her to his monthly gathering of songwriters to get to know her better. The evening of quirky characters and light-hearted singing is interrupted by the arrival of Aiden Bronson. He’s got a hit song on the radio, and he’s back to show off, stirring up some rivalry while he’s at it. How will Lyle compete against Aiden’s charisma and talent in order to win Trish’s heart?
Buy it in ebook and paperback formats on Amazon. Itâs also available as a full cast audiobook recording wherever you like to get your audiobooks and podcasts. Find all those links, hear samples, and meet the cast on D.G.’s website.
More About D.G. Driver
D.G. Driver is a multi-award-winning author of young adult and middle grade books. She primarily writes contemporary fantasy, but she also loves writing realistic fiction and has even dabbled in romance. D.G. lives near Nashville, TN and is a teacher in an inclusive classroom of typically developing and special needs children in an early Intervention program. Visit her on the web at:
Are you an author interested in writing a Behind the Rewrite guest blog post? Get the guidelines here.
Check out Shortcuts for Writers Freebies including a 5-day line editing course, Facebook group, and resource for naming your characters.
Check out Shortcuts for Writers affordable courses including Book Editing Blueprint: A Step by Step Plan to Making Your Novels Publishable and the Energize Your Writing Toolkit: Cheat Sheets for Character Emotions.
Hi there! I’m Stacy Juba, an author, freelance editor, and the founder of Shortcuts for Writers. I’d love to connect. If you’re a writer, here’s how we can work together:Â
How do you increase the word count in a novel when the book is too short? In today’s Behind the Rewrite, author Clarissa Gosling gives us a glimpse into how she fleshed out her YA fantasy Dragon Shift during the editing process. Writing too short is an issue that many writers struggle with, especially after they trim the fat and tighten their sentences. Below, you can see how Clarissa handled this common problem.
Change #1: Add Description
I write short, so before I go through and line edit I have to add in more details. My first draft is a whizz through the story and what happens, but is incredibly light on description. I think this is because I often skim over any description when I’m reading, so the first thing I have to do is go through and sprinkle in descriptions of the characters and the settings. Having a clear picture of what my characters look like is often one of the last things I know about them, sometimes not til I’m fairly well into the editing process. The same for details of the settings. It is only when I’m going through to revise that I search online for images or details that I can use. And in every scene, I aim to include details from other senses as well as what it look like. This adds to the variety and makes it more immersive for the reader. For Dragon Shift, I also chopped the first two scenes from my first draft and the last five scenes to tighten the pacing.
Change #2: Add Emotion
As well as adding in description, I look for ways to add in emotion. I find The Emotion Thesaurus an invaluable resource for this as it gives so many options for ways you can show the emotion of your characters. And showing not telling is the maximum for good fiction. So for every scene I think about the emotions that the main characters are going through and how I can portray that through their actions. Do they bite their lip or cross their arms and frown? And adding in their body language helps to break up dialogue and make it clear who is speaking without saying he said, she said all the time. (Note from Stacy: Also check out my Energize Your Writing Toolkit: Cheat Sheets for Character Emotions e-book and mini course for another tool about body language and emotions.)
Change #3: Include Specific Fantastical Details
My story is an epic fantasy set in another world with shifters, dragons and magic, so I want to portray that through my word use. Terms for measuring time and distance, the way they talk about magic, etc, these all need to be consistent and some to be different from what we use in the real world. For example, in my story the main way they measure time is with water clocks, so I used the words drib, dram and drogue for increasing lengths of time. It is a reminder that their time measurement is dependent on water when their terms for time are also based on liquid measures. Then I hope that the way I use those words makes their meaning clear in the text. This is a way I can show that there are differences between my fictional world and our real one. These terms add flavour and interest in an easy way, though choosing them so that they are internally consistent with how your world works takes a lot of thinking. And you need to make sure you donât overdo this. Choose which terms you want to change and then keep others the same so that you donât overwhelm your readers.
Change #4: Check Consistency
As I go through my first draft I look for consistency. On a large scale this is consistency in things like Point of View. As I read through Dragon Shift, I realised I had started writing the story in first person, but after a few chapters I changed to close third. On going through to revise it, I decided to switch the first section to close third to keep it all the same.
On a smaller scale, this is looking at how things work and what I’ve called them. For example, the main mode of transport in my world, at least for those who can afford it, are magically powered barges that sail through the air. As I had written my first draft I had changed the names of these through the course of the story, so in revising I picked one term (floatship) and used that the whole time.
Change #5: Increase The Romance
Though the main change I had to make was increasing the romance in the story. My first draft went from her first impression of him as a “gangly, pimply boy, a couple of years younger than her,” through very little interaction, to a heartfelt and emotional scene at the end. (I can’t say more about the end scene without giving away too many spoilers.) Needless to say, he is now a couple of years older than her, a bit more attractive-looking, and I’ve elaborated on their relationship through the story as they get to know each other. There are now more scenes where they talk more and learn about each other, as well as showing how they interact during group scenes. Increasing the screen time for the two of them together automatically develops their relationship to, I hope, a level where the final scene is more believable rather than coming out of nowhere.
At least, this was my intention to do. If you are interested to see how well I managed this then read Dragon Shift, the first in my new YA Fantasy series.
Want To Read The Book?
Half-bear-shifter half-dragon in a world where dragons are thought extinct, Birgith must face the ultimate test of her shifting ability to be accepted as an adult in the Bear-shifter clan.
If Birgith manifests any sign that she has dragon blood, she will be killed immediately and her dragon family hunted, as they are feared by all four clans in the continent of Kaitstud. But when the test comes, she is unable to shift at all. So she is exiled and classed as a human, with all the restrictions on her that designation entails. Leaving behind everything sheâs ever known, Birgith sets out on a perilous journey away from her forest home to make peace with her dual heritage. A journey to find her hidden dragon family. A journey that puts her life and theirs at risk. Or that will help her embrace who she truly is.
The first in an exciting new series for readers who love magic, adventure and strong female characters.
Clarissa has always lived more in the world of daydream and fiction than in reality. In her writing she explores purpose and belonging across worlds. Having never found her own portal to faeryland, she is resigned to writing about fantastical worlds instead. She now lives in the Netherlands with her family, where she writes as much as they will let her. When not reading or writing, she drinks too much tea and has a burgeoning obsession with Bundt cakes.
Are you an author interested in writing a Behind the Rewrite guest blog post? Get the guidelines here.
Check out Shortcuts for Writers Freebies including a 5-day line editing course, Facebook group, and resource for naming your characters.
Check out Shortcuts for Writers affordable courses including Book Editing Blueprint: A Step by Step Plan to Making Your Novels Publishable and the Energize Your Writing Toolkit: Cheat Sheets for Character Emotions.
Hi there! I’m Stacy Juba, an author, freelance editor, and the founder of Shortcuts for Writers. I’d love to connect. If you’re a writer, here’s how we can work together:Â
This is an interview I did for Emma Dhesi’s podcast for new writers, Turning Readers Into Writers. It was also livestreamed in her Facebook group, Turning Readers Into Writers With Emma Dhesi.
The topic was cost-effective editing and self-editing tips. Thank you to Emma for generously giving me the video to share. We discussed my writing background, delved into common mistakes that writers make, and I shared about how my self-paced online course Book Editing Blueprint: A Step-By-Step Plan to Making Your Novels Publishable saves writers time and money.
During the interview, I also responded to questions from Facebook listeners about working with an editor.
Emma is an extremely inspiring writer and coach who helps beginner writers find the time and confidence to write their first novel.
ENROLL IN MY COURSE, BOOK EDITING BLUEPRINT, USING EMMA’S AFFILIATE LINK
Hi there! I’m Stacy Juba, an author, freelance editor, and the founder of Shortcuts for Writers. I’d love to connect. If you’re a writer, here’s how we can work together:Â
Many beginner and intermediate writers find the book editing process overwhelming. That’s where I come in. I was recently asked on a podcast why Iâm so passionate about teaching self-editing skills to authors. The thing is, Iâm not just an editor. Iâm an author who has received crushing editorial letters, letters that outlined everything I was doing wrong. Iâd thought those manuscripts were pretty darn close to being publishable, but nope! Evidently not.
Those letters got my heart pounding, my blood pressure rising, and my eyes prickling with tears. Donât get me wrong. The editors said encouraging things, too, but all I could focus on at first was the overwhelming list of problems to fix.
For example:
âI think in order to make us eager to get back to this place in future installments, you may want to dial it up even more to make the park a true character in the story.â
âWe donât know enough about what your characters want to allow us to get really invested in their story and the outcome.â
âIâm going to make a bold suggestion here. What if there was no Danielle?â
In that letter, I discovered my setting needed to become a character (huh?), my real characters were flat, and I should consider cutting the bitchy ex-girlfriend who drove most of the conflict. And trust me, there was more. Much more!
Good editors also focus on the positives during the book editing process, and this was an excellent editor whose suggestions helped me a great deal. She included paragraphs like this one: âI know these seem like a lot of notes, and I hope Iâm not overwhelming you. I really think you have nailed the more critical elements that canât be fixed as easily. You have a fluid writing style and a good sense of pacing, and most importantly, you write with voice.â
In the beginning though, all I felt was overwhelm. Of course, I thanked her and gushed over how much I appreciated her insightful editorial feedback, because I did appreciate it. Sheâd saved me from publishing a book that wasnât ready. Thanks to her, I realized the book editing process wasn’t done yet. That didnât make the truth any easier to swallow, though. I wasnât almost finished with the book after all. In fact, I wasnât even close to being finished.
I survived the rewrite just as Iâd powered through the other tough rewrites over the decades. With a leap of faith, discipline, and peanut M&Ms. Plenty of peanut M&Ms!
Eventually, I became a developmental editor, coaching other authors through the book editing process, and found myself writing these kinds of distressing letters. Iâd echo the words of my mentors, incorporating lines like, âPLEASEÂ donât be discouraged. Youâre a talented writer and this story has so much potential.â Iâd nervously await a reply, praying I hadnât crushed a new writerâs dreams with my editing feedback.
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that every manuscript has potential, but it takes good editing to transform it into the book it deserves to be.
I wished I had a fairy godmother to transform this early draft of Fooling Around With Cinderella, the book described in the above editorial letter.
And I really wished I could wave a wand and make things easier for my clients.
They were jumping from Point A (finishing their draft and revising as best as they could) to Point C (hiring a freelance editor) with no transition in between.
What they needed was a stop at Point B, which in my world stands for Blueprint. Everything I put into the course and the step-by-step guide that accompanies it comes from thousands of hours spent editing my own manuscripts and my clientsâ projects. If you’d like to learn more about how Book Editing Blueprint can transform your writing and editing, watch the above trailer and then visit the course home page for more information. Hope to see you inside the course!
Hi there! I’m Stacy Juba, an author, freelance editor, and the founder of Shortcuts for Writers. I’d love to connect. If you’re a writer, here’s how we can work together:Â
